I promised myself I wouldn’t spend any money on Angry Birds Go!, and as of last week, I had finished more than half the game without doing so.

The free-to-download, free-to-play racing game, which was released in December, is like many of its ilk: the basics don’t cost a thing, but if you want to keep racing with better resources or after your turn is up, real-world cash is required.

And therein lies the addictive pleasure of gaming in general and free-to-play games in particular. We want to level up, to flaunt our scores on social media and leaderboards. We want to master this stupid time waster that somehow grips our brains for hours on end.

But we always run up against a wall. We’re only $5 — or $10 or $20 — away from owing the best cart or the most upgrades. We feel like second-class citizens only using the default options, but we refuse to give in to the manipulative format and buy more. Are we cheap or just practical?

I don’t know, but I’m neither at this point. I caved.

I had been playing the game — a Mario Kart-style 3D spin-off of Rovio’s chipper Angry Birds franchise — late into the night, heedless of the time or my cramped back muscles as I lay in a tense ball on the couch.

Players obtain familiar Angry Birds characters through a number of challenge races including beat-the-clock, beat-the-AI-opponents, and collect-the-coins/fruit. I watched as I burned through characters and ran out of chances continue racing. Characters automatically recharge after an hour or so, but if you have enough gems (the game’s ultimate currency), you can use them to immediately recharge and keep playing.

However, you can only acquire gems in two ways: by purchasing them from the in-game store or painstakingly earning them through hours of level-grinding. I did the former for about half of the game, but the “I’m almost there!” frustration of JUST BARELY getting to the end of my current challenge map hit its peak. I needed to keep playing, despite not having earned any in-game resources to do so.

It’s no accident the game operates this way. It seems to calculate how many coins you need to upgrade your speed, acceleration, handling, etc. and then gives you just slightly fewer than that after winning a race. I eventually went to the in-game store and dropped $3 for another 100 gems which, when all characters are depleted, accounts for about 10 more games. I felt dirty, ashamed. I had promised myself I wouldn’t fall prey to this unabashed, casino-like, Candy Crush Saga ploy.

But here I was, happily doing it, and in hindsight my shame was unwarranted. I’ve already sunk countless hours into a half-dozen other Angry Birds games (the original, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Star Wars) and have always been pleased to see that whenever there’s an update to the app, another new/free level or two has been added. That’s a lot of a value for one-time purchase of 99 cents.

And since I had been able to wring hours of play out of Angry Birds Go! without spending a penny, the $3 gem purchase seemed like a drop in the bucket. Still, this is an insidious model to encourage since many free-to-play games have made millions by getting players to spend real money in pursuit of their arbitrary goals.

Of course, Angry Birds Go! has a lot going for it. Millions of us are already familiar with this bright, cartoonish world. The racing mechanics are easy to learn yet tough to master. They’re similar to other iOS racing games like Asphalt in that they rely mostly on turning the iPhone or iPad to steer while your virtual foot is always on the gas pedal.

The environments are surprisingly detailed and alive, and the tracks themselves are clever — and, at higher levels, even thrilling in their insane jumps and logic-defying turns — but without being distractingly so. Even the characters’ special powers are distinct enough that choosing the right racer can mean the difference between first and fourth place.

Rovio put a top-notch development team on this game, and it shows. If you can amass enough characters by grinding through the coin-collecting, leveling-up process, you can easily be one of those people who proudly play for an hour (or more) without using real money.

A&E reporter John Wenzel has covered a variety of topics for The Denver Post over the years, including video games, comedy, music and the fine arts. He's been playing and loving video games since his dad brought home a sweet ColecoVision in 1983. Catch him on PSN as beardsandgum.

Hugh got his start writing for the Cheyenne and Woodmen Edition newspapers in Colorado Springs. In 2011 he moved to Denver where he has written for Denver Urban Spectrum and Colorado Community Media’s Wheat Ridge Transcript. Hugh joined The Denver Post in 2014 as an editorial assistant.